As a framework, below are five principles shared by my friend, fellow CSP, and Hall of Fame speaker, Barbara Glanz who, besides being a brilliant speaker and trainer, did her master’s thesis to find the adult learning principles that were common to all empirical research into andragogy.

To enjoy the learning

A frequent question I get is, “What do you do with a boring topic?” When I’m feeling snarky I say, “Don’t be boring.”

The inconvenient truth is that your content is interesting to someone in some context. Find that angle, and you’ll find more leads. Oh, and boring presenters are the number one reason people bail out of webinars early, so there’s that whole “need people to stick around and hear the message” thing, too, if you want to affect change.

To be able to apply the knowledge

The most powerful response mechanism is the promise of benefit. Make your webinar’s promotional efforts pass the “So what this means to me is…” test.

To be able to describe that knowledge to someone else

Teaching something to someone else is a powerful way to solidify your own learning. When it comes to lead generation programs, this might be messaging that your webinar will help someone become the trusted advisor on the topic. It may be that during the webinar tactics like repetition are used to solidify the key point which, if you’re generating leads, means that people need to remember what you’ve said and that you’re the one who said it.

To feel confidence in the presenter

Often times it is the credibility of the speaker that will draw people in (during the invitation process). The same goes for the opening introduction. Say what needs to be said but no more.

To be respected by the presenter

This might be hard to do in a single webinar’s promotion, but hosting a series of webinar that interconnect is a force multiplier to webinar promotional success. Helping presenters talk with people instead of at them is essential (and we’ll cover a few practical ideas during this webinar).

The bottom line

There are no silver bullets for promoting webinars. The best weapon you have is to create compelling educational content. Your challenge, if you’re up for it, is to marry the foundational principles of adult learning to amplify how that content resonates with your audience.

Content, not the medium, is the primary reason you’ll generate leads

I’d hope it goes without saying, but people want to learn stuff, solve problems, and succeed at their roles. The foundation of how they get there is content-driven.

This doesn’t mean they don’t have preferences in terms of which medium they learn through, and as a marketer you have choices to make about which media will deliver what you want.

The medium isn’t the message, but it can dramatically transform results

That I’m an inch wide and mile deep (centimeter wide and kilometer deep?) is well known, but look past my bias to this fact: live, interaction with people has the potential to bring something unique to your lead generation program. It’s part of what we’ll be exploring in this webinar.

If you’re marketing for webinars is no different than papers or ebooks, you’re missing out

If live interaction is awesome (it is) and you’re not marketing that unique quality (correctly), you are likely leaving money on the table.

If you’re producing webinars that don’t get the results you want, you may need to coach your presenters

If content is the foundation and presenters are the source of that, you’re faced with the reality that you can only do so much with something that otherwise misses the mark.

An effective partnership to optimize your webinars is critical

Optimization drives valuation. How the marketer communicates the value and how a presenter delivers value isn’t just about information availability, it’s about how a prospect perceives and engages.

The bottom line

It is entirely understandable why some organizations don’t achieve all they want with webinars. There are plenty of webinars that miss the mark that serve as poor role models – models that get repeated. If you’ll better align the content – the very foundation of your lead generation programs – with webinar execution you’ll easily stand out from the pack.

If your version of webinar promotion is “thank you for your email address,” you’re missing out.

What follows are tactics I’ve used or seen used with my clients, all with results that are worth mentioning. They may not all be for you, but they should poke you in the creativity bone.

(And if you want to see some other tactics for transforming content marketing with webinars, catch me here)

Before the webinar

Combine the webinar with an “infokit” (or paper, or…)

Registering for a webinar is almost always in advance of the date/time. Something additional also rewards behavior with something immediate.

Come interact with a luminary/expert

Webinar advertisers frequently say “come to this live, interactive webinar.” The trouble is that a little Q&A at the end doesn’t count…the presentation itself is still something we’d never stand for in an in-person seminar.

Sometimes the ability to connect with and/or get a question answered by a subject matter expert is as powerful (or more) than all the content. It’s live and realtime. Promote it as such, but not with the same old language that every one else uses and nobody believes.

Promote well in advance and immediately before

Social media is part of nearly every webinar promotion plan. The problem is that you don’t have perfect reach — only a part of your social following will see any one post. Promote too much at once and you’ll blow fans/followers out of the water. Lose the idea of a perfect time to send an email or drop a tweet. Spread out both timing and tactics.

Use registration pages as mini-surveys

Gather feedback! Use it in advance to dial in the presentation. Use it like a mini-research project to learn more about audience wants, needs, fears.

Create a custom email signature

Have the sales/services teams append it to their existing email signatures. Now every communication indirectly increases exposure. A lot.

After they’ve registered

Attend to win…

It doesn’t have to be gimmicky or expensive, and it can boost attendance rates. The key is that the messaging is that participants have to be in attendance to win. Obviously you can do this when promoting the webinar, but what if you tested adding it to the messaging you send after they’ve registered to increase the value you’re delivering? This leads to…

Customize the system-generated confirmation and reminder emails

For an extra boost, kick those generic system-generated confirmation and reminder emails to the curb. Nobody pays attention to them in an overflowing inbox because they all look the same. Use your Tweet-writing skills to change the headline to something catchier. Tweak the body copy to remind people of the benefits of attending (that they’ve probably forgotten since they registered three days ago).

While the webinar’s live

Stay to the end to win (the live drawing for…)

It only makes sense to encourage the behavior you want right? Super strategy: do it more than once (not just at the beginning) to make sure you catch the late-comers. Extra-super strategy: do it both verbally and visually (on a slide) to hit multiple senses. Rock-your-everything strategy: have the moderator mention it at a natural transition point (e.g., while waiting for people to vote in a poll).

Why? Don’t YOU tune out that “blah blah blah” at the beginning of the webinar? So does a big chunk of your audience.

Fill out the exit survey to receive…

It’s only fair to give/get value. Make it clear what you want (feedback), and reward those who participate. One client saw a 71% increase in their survey responses by adding a three-slide sequence at the end of the presentation. They cycled through those slides during Q&A, visually reinforcing the benefit of participating.

Too, they asked respondents in that survey if they wanted to be opted into the next webinar in the series. Same extra-Viagra strategies as the previous point.

At the end/after

Have the moderator ask for what they’ve learned and tie it to future webinars

A powerful seminar technique that reminds people of the value they received is to ask them what their takeaway was.

Here’s the extra step: use a transition as an opportunity to mention the call to action you desire. Example: “…that’s great, and if you appreciate how today’s tips will prepare you to launch widgets, be sure to check out…”

It doesn’t have to be a long sales pitch to get additional exposure for other calls to action.

Add invitations to connect to the follow up emails

Connect with us on Twitter at… If you liked this webinar, be sure to check out the next one here…

Give the sales team a warm followup

A lead means jack diddly if it doesn’t turn into money, right? An opportunity to call a client with a reason is always a powerful value to them. Properly prepared, reps can follow up with, “You asked a question during yesterday’s webinar…did that get answered? By the way, you might also find <whatever it is> useful…”

The bottom line

Unlike most content marketing assets, webinars have a lifecycle. This gives you unique opportunities to deliver messages and influence outcomes. It’s a little different than what most people do, but that’s the opportunity, right?

A little bit of prep can go a long way. And if I was a betting man (I am!), I’d guess you can use every advantage you can get.

Where in the lead-to-close cycle is a webinar most beneficial? The question came in after a recent conference I spoke at.

Hi Roger, thanks for the informative session and offer to answer a follow up question. We’re a mid-sized company selling professional services, and we use webinars with mixed results. Where in the lead-to-close cycle is a webinar most beneficial? Rachel

Hey Rachel, thanks for writing.

First I’ll give you the short answer: everywhere.

Now, lest that seem like a biased opinion from an industry old timer, let me entreat you to read a bit further. And be sure you should grab one of the couple papers I’ve linked to down below.

Here’s an explanation to supplement the papers.

Remember that web conferencing is a medium, not a communication format

Generally true out there in webinar land is the assumption that a webinar is about 45 minutes of presentation plus Q&A at the end. Hogwash.

We don’t look at Microsoft Word and assume there’s only one way to write something, right? We have to know if we’re writing a white paper or a blog post or a video script. Word might be your tool for communicating in a written medium, but the style of communication is different based on purpose.

So how do we as human beings communicate throughout the lead-to-close cycle? We make presentations, we have conversations or meetings, we make product or service demonstrations, we host conferences where we put a thought leader on stage, and on and on.

Now just do that online. Web conferencing is one medium through which to do it, but if your webinars have only one approach to content or way of doing them, that might be why your results aren’t optimum.

Tailor your webinar style to the stage in the sales cycle

Plenty of folks have written about the buyer’s journey and tailoring content and messaging to optimize effectiveness, but let’s address it to the style of webinar you host.

In short, my research shows that people attending webinars to hear thought leaders are least likely to expect interaction, whereas later in the cycle they’re likely there for different reasons (and very much expect a dialogue). See both papers below.

Remember that there’s always disparity between target and actual audiences

Just because you host a webinar tailored to one stage of your funnel doesn’t mean that people don’t show up who are in different stages of their journey. But you’re speaking to those who are in that phase or stage.

One other tip: be sure to be clear about what the purpose of the webinar is both in promotions and even in the opening comments. People don’t mind sales demos…when they’re expecting them.

The bottom line: You also need to become a teacher

Now that you’re better equipped, you will find that over and over that you run into other people that think a webinar is a content and style format. That it has to be an hour long. That you’re going to do them like all the other webinars people have seen (not usually good examples).

If you introduce something different like the idea of doing a 20-minute webinar with extended Q&A or stopping in the middle for questions or changing up how you script the intro based on the style of webinar you’re doing (see “Why Webinar Attendees Leave Early” research below), you’ll sometimes meet resistance.

Tell ‘em what I tell ‘em: “A Word document can be used for a lot of different types of writing, right? We use web conferencing for a lot of different types of audio/visual communication.”

And remember this: some will listen, and some won’t. Give yourself a little grace, and good luck to you, Rachel!

Social and mobile marketing aren’t the same thing, but they go hand in hand. Because they’re so pervasive, it is inevitable that they will affect how your audience responds to your webinars.

As you’re planning the new year, here are 7 areas to think about when considering webinar programs in your content marketing strategy.

Promotion

Timeframes for response

Increasingly, mobility is fueling demand for right-now information. Promoting a webinar well in advance is still advisable, but not planning up-to-the-moment-of-start-time notifications to your fans and followers is a missed opportunity.

Use of hashtags

It’s common to use hashtags with webinars to enhance social interaction, but more often than not they’re one-offs. Consider a hashtag that supports the whole webinar series instead of using a different one every time.

Production

Many web conferencing platforms behave differently on mobile devices, and sometimes mobile users find that a feature is simply not available. A couple considerations:

Video

Access to recordings

Some web conferencing platforms produce a recording that is in a different format or media type than their primary app. If mobile consumption of your webinar’s recorded asset is important, this is worth investigating also.

Presentation/user experience

Slide design

There are many aspects of slide design that change when you do webinars (or they should!), but if you want to deliver impact to mobile users, pay particular attention to font size.

Interactions

Using polls or chat or audio Q&A is usually a very different experience for mobile users. If it’s important to you to have presenters talk WITH instead of AT, you may need to help them help the cause.

Phone vs. voip audio

Mobile users may decide to attend while mobile (crazy idea!), but that includes driving. Is it easy for them to simply log in/call in/listen in?